Sentiment
by PsilentAsInCjelli
Summary: Carolyn considers her options. Post-Zurich. Major spoilers.


**Content Warnings:** Financial hardship and divorce are both touched on. There's a flippant remark about the hypothetical death of one's spouse, and a metaphor that involves drowning.

* * *

**!**

* * *

She hasn't decided yet what to do about G-ERTI. It would be __possible __to remove and replace all the wiring. It would be __easier__, and __cheaper__, to scrap the whole thing and sell it all off.

Though she supposes __cheaper__ doesn't really need to enter into the decision. Not anymore.

It doesn't make sense to keep her. Poetically, yes, it would be perfect. But now that she can finally afford to upgrade the company, it only follows that she should start with upgrading the company's __equipment__.

A little bit sad and a little bit funny, that G-ERTI should provide the excuse for her own demise.

__It is an __**_**_aeroplane_**_**, Carolyn tells herself, sounding more than a bit cross in her own head. __Stop it.__

She remembers the day it became __her __aeroplane, and remembers the six months between that day and the day she decided how she was going to use it. It had been half a year of scrambling to look happy, spending too much money on things she didn't need, buying a dog because it was her damn house and her damn carpets and if she wanted a damn dog to track mud all over them then she would damn well have one.

The next several years were a different sort of scramble, barely making ends meet, trying desperately not to look like she was barely making ends meet, and privately being happier than she had been in years even under the genuine panic of just simply not ever having enough money – because she finally had something to __be__, besides recently divorced and wishing she'd been widowed instead.

She never expected the company to last, deep down, under the layers of calm professionalism for her clients and irritable warnings of bankruptcy for her employees. Every year the business kept going was another year exactly as it should be, another year she could hardly believe, and another year to serenely throw at people who were surprised to find them still up in the sky. It was the only way to keep herself from a constant state of unmanageable anxiety: expect the worst, demand the best, and do all you can to make it. She has always had at least seven contingency plans on hand in case of MJN's sudden implosion, but nobody needed to know about them. They needed to know that she was in charge and that she expected things to run as smoothly as possible and would be __very__ __disappointed __and __very surprised__ if they didn't.

Her pilots and her son knew, of course. Eventually. In stages. Arthur knew because he lived those first six months and next several years with her. Martin knew because she couldn't pay him. Douglas –

The relief of finally telling Douglas that she __did not have any money__ was unexpected, gradual, and grudging. She was not happy about it. The first time she realized that the little knot of worry in her chest, present during every flight and doubly so on __difficult__ ones, had receded just a bit at the thought that now Douglas was on her side, she felt as though the plane had just gone into a nosedive. She did not __need__ Douglas on her __side__.

The fact that Douglas was just as invested in MJN Air's continued existence as she was for the simple reason that he would probably have had a great deal of difficulty finding work anywhere else made it all a bit more tolerable. He was not throwing her a life raft from the shore: they were all of them sinking together.

The real relief was the ability to just __complain__ at somebody about the money. To just snap about a client's impossible standards to somebody who knew perfectly well why they couldn't refuse the job. To just __bitterly__ __seethe__ in the presence of a fellow seether, just as steeped in bitterness.

It was the complaining, she sometimes thinks, that started bridging the gap she deliberately dug between herself and her employees. It is hard to maintain a cold cohabitation with someone who is stuck in the same flying money sink with the same unrelenting passengers when all you really want to do is mutter to someone besides your own doggedly cheerful son that the small child screaming in 3b sounds exactly like a tea kettle full of tormented souls.

It has been __their aeroplane__ for a long time now. She likes the sound of it better than she ever would have all those years ago, naming her company and sending her ex-husband a picture of herself and her son in the cockpit of her jet.

Good old G-ERTI. She flew Carolyn off into a new life and has kept her airborne through the roughest of storms.

Still.

Sentiment has its place, and that place is not anywhere between Carolyn and hundreds of feet of gold wiring.

She lays a hand on the back of the captain's seat and blinks fiercely.

It is an __aeroplane__.

She moves slowly and stops to look around the galley. The cabin. Ghosts of memories bite at her and she shakes them off, impatient with the entire thing. She wants suddenly to be taking pictures of it all, which she absolutely will not allow herself to do.

Taking pictures would mean she's decided on scrapping it, and even if she has, pictures of an old aeroplane aren't going to serve any useful purpose.

On the way out, she pats the side of the doorway, shakes her head in disbelief, and mutters, "__Gold__."

Gold.

She can damn well afford a bit of sentiment.


End file.
